Qualified Educational Mental Health Practitioner

We are looking for a qualified Educational Mental Health Practitioner (EMHP) or Children's Wellbeing Practitioner (CWP) who wishes to join an existing school based Mental Health Support Team (MHST). The post-holder will work in the Stevenage team which is a fully established MHST; one of the first trailblazer sites nationally. The Stevenage team is a caring, supportive environment to work in with good leadership providing clear objectives and direction with regular supervision.

The Stevenage team supports 20 educational settings across the borough and have built solid working relationships with each setting. All applicants must be registered with a relevant governing body, i.e. BPS, BABCP. The service provides early interventions to children and young people experiencing mild to moderate mental health concerns in an educational setting. The Mental Health Support Teams operate year-round, providing support to young people during school holidays in addition to term time.

The core hours will be Monday - Friday 9-5 but some work (facilitation of group work/workshops) may be required outside of these times. The post-holder will work with people of different cultural backgrounds and ages, using interpreters when necessary and should be committed to equal opportunities. This post affords opportunity for involvement in, and contribution to service development. The Hertfordshire MHST is continuing to expand year on year and therefore offers plenty of opportunity for career development.

• Develop and maintain professional relationships with education staff
• Be on site at allocated educational settings each day of the week
• Provide 1-1 interventions such as low intensity CBT (guided self-help) for children, young people, parent/carers and school staff
• Group interventions
• Workshops for children, young people, parent/carers and school staff
• Drop‑in surgeries for children, young people and school staff
• Facilitate co‑production to support service development
• Support the team in resource development
• Any other duties commensurate with the grade which may be required to enable effective and efficient running of the service

• Reduce stigma around Mental Health
• Enhance emotional wellbeing by promoting and building resilience in children and young people through educational workshops, assemblies and PSHE lessons
• Deliver psycho‑education and support to parent/carers and teachers to improve their understanding of children and young people’s needs
• Support children and young people at the early stages of emotional wellbeing challenges to prevent further Mental Health intervention later in life

• Demonstrates an understanding of anxiety, depression and challenging behaviour and how it may present in universal services
• Demonstrates understanding of the need to use evidence‑based psychological models and how it relates to this post
• Knowledge of capacity and consent issues including Gillick competence
• Knowledge of educational environments
• Knowledge of safeguarding issues
• Ability to carry out 1:1 therapeutic mental health interventions with children/families
• Ability to conduct group parenting programmes
• Ability to work within educational settings to increase mental health awareness within the staff group
• Ability to conduct mental health assessments of children and young people
• Ability to make an assessment of risk and to record and communicate it appropriately
• Ability to take appropriate action to mitigate or manage risk

• Knowledge of factors affecting acceptability and accessibility of mental health care
• Demonstrates knowledge of the stressors young people may encounter in an educational setting and the impact that these can have on mental health
• Knowledge of the functional operation of specialist CAMHS teams
• Knowledge of the school's safeguarding procedures and who the Designated Safeguarding Lead, (DSL), is in each establishment that they work in
• Ability to teach others about mental health issues
• Ability to conduct other group therapeutic interventions with children and their families, Experience of working with children and young people, their families and others
• Experience of…